60% of nursing home staff refused shots, Walgreens director says

Many Americans signed up on websites before dawn, waited in long lines, and drove for hours to get Covid vaccines.

But in nursing homes, many people have reacted in the opposite way to vaccination options: About 60% of workers in long-term care facilities refused the shots, said Rick Gates, Walgreens senior vice president of pharmacy and health care. He said about 20% of the residents refused the vaccines.

“We saw the reluctance to use vaccines – especially those who work in these facilities – to be higher than we expected,” he said at CNBC’s Healthy Returns virtual event Tuesday.

Walgreens and CVS Health were chosen by the federal government to administer vaccines to residents and staff of thousands of long-term care facilities across the country. Residents of nursing homes and assisted living were at the top of the priority list, along with health professionals, as they have had a disproportionate number of outbreaks and deaths from Covid-19.

The rejected vaccines hint at another challenge the country will face, especially as pharmacies and community clinics get more doses of the injection: convincing the majority of Americans to get the life-saving vaccine, which will help protect the wider public and protect economy will gradually return to a certain degree of normalcy.

Gates said excess vaccine doses from long-term care facilities were eventually returned to the states or given to other high-priority people.

Starting Friday, Walgreens will offer vaccines in some stores in 15 states, along with the cities of Chicago and New York, as part of a federal pharmacy program. It will administer the vaccines to priority groups in those stores, such as elderly Americans or those with medical conditions.

Gates said the pharmacy chain looks forward to taking a greater role in the vaccination effort, but that “the availability of vaccines is the biggest barrier.” He said he expects doses to be more widely available to the general public at all Walgreens stores in late March or early April.